Got
money? Here's how to give it away.

First thing to do is start with one problem you want to solve. You can
add more problems later, but pick one to get started on.

Next, narrow down the problem. For example, "education" is too broad.
Narrow
it down to something you can measure.

And narrow it to something you think feel passionate about that you
think "they" should fix it, e.g., something so broken that somebody should do something about this!

In my opinion, some of the best goals are those that affect you personally so
that you can see the impact in your own life as well as others. For example, I
was bothered by junk faxes so after a 3 year crusade, my efforts led to the
collapse of the world's #1 junk faxer. I now get a lot fewer faxes and so does
everyone else in the country.

For example, "the high school drop out rate in major cities is about 50%....
that is abusrdly high!"

Now, narrow the problem even more and make it as local as you can because
trying to fix that everywhere is hard to do! Small problems are easier to fix
and you can then leverage that fix later.

Example: "the high school drop out rate in Oakland, CA is over 50%. Someone
ought to fix that"

Now, narrow it even further. Go as far as you can. Example: "the
drop out rate at Castlemont High School in Oakland, CA is 63%."

Now that you have a narrow problem that is inspirational to you, set a big hairy audacious goal to solve the problem.

Example: "I want to cut that drop out rate at Edison High School in Oakland,
CA in half in 4 years."

Excellent. If you can achieve that in that school, then you can go on to
bigger problems like how to apply the solution you just got in that problem to a
wider area, e.g., to all Oakland schools. And if you can achieve that, you can
then expand to all California schools. Then to all schools in the US. In short,
solve one problem narrowly and then expand the solution outwards.

Now, the "local community" approach doesn't always work, e.g., if you are involved in nuclear
disarmament, you can't start locally; you have to start nationally. Air quality
problems caused by fuel emissions probably can't be solved locally. You probably
have to attack it at a state or federal level, or start with a specific car
company.

And some education problems lead to solutions that are only possible on a
national scope, e.g., if the solution to the drop out problem at Edison High is
the lack of national standards that can only be imposed by the federal
government, then you need to acknowledge that and put that in your plan.

However, in our example, because other schools in the state are doing well,
and it is only the inner city schools that are doing poorly, chances are
excellent that the problem can tackled on a purely local level and then those
solutions can be exported to other inner city school systems within the state
(and then within the country).

OK, so you have a problem that is possible to solve.

Next, recruit a small panel of 3 or 4 subject matter experts (or do it
yourself if you are so inclined) to do the homework and research what others
have done. Has anyone solved this problem before? How did they do it? Can it be
replicated here? This is really important. It is stupid to solve a problem that
there are already good solutions for unless those solutions are inadequate for
some reason.

If no one has solved it, then your experts need to come up with a business
plan for a pilot project that might have a chance at achieving the goal you
defined.

In either case, your panel creates a business plan for how you are going to achieve
your goal.

Then you have a panel of other experts as a sounding board.... not the same
group, but an independent group. Does the plan
make sense? Does it have a chance of working? If so, you then execute the plan
which may be a feat in itself!

Execution may involve lots of your time, or you may be able to persuade (or
pay) others to manage the execution for you. Your choice.

And presumably that plan may involve cash investment, like some of your money
to incentivize the behavior required to achieve the goal (i.e., behavioral
changes that are required by the plan) or to simply provide the investment
capital required to implement the plan.

So your contribution is a) you came up with the goal b) you recruited the
team (or hired someone to recruit the team or started a foundation that
recruited the team) that came up with the plan and c)
you helped fund some or all of the plan, and d) you managed the implementation.
You can do any/all of a, b, c, d.

Not much different than starting a company.

Some people might focus their charitable dollars on the research and planning
stages and turn it over to others to provide funding. Some people might do the
whole thing themselves, funding the plan and funding implementation. The choice
is yours sometimes. Other times, the burden will fall on you to fund the
implementation of your idea if you want to see it succeed.

Here are a couple of examples from my life.

In my day-to-day experiences, I often run across things that need to be
fixed. For example, last night I learned that the charter school that my kids
attend is forced to raise 40% of their budget from parents because the law
doesn't allow parcel tax funds to be allocated to the charter school. This was
clearly an oversight in the law that should be fixed. But there is no bill in
the legislature to fix that inequity probably because the teacher's union would
be
against it (since it would mean less money for them). So you have this one big
constituency that is against such a bill and a small number of people who are
adversely effected being in favor. How do you get politicians to vote for
something that is clearly the "right thing" and "fair thing" to do? That would be a wonderful cause
for someone to take on.

Another example is medical research. I set for myself a goal of curing all
major diseases. Of course, that is way too broad, so I picked a specific disease
to focus on: glaucoma. Next, I gathered experts together who advised that an
interdisciplinary approach to the problem might be a new approach worth trying
since other approaches had not been successful. I hired a medical specialist to
manage this and she came up with a collaborative model for medical research and
carefully selected medical researchers that could put their self-interests aside
and work as a team. She also arranged a partnership with the Glaucoma Research Foundation so
that we didn't have to supply all the funding ourselves. The collaboration has
been very successful and has resulted in new important understandings of how
glaucoma works. It may lead to a cure.

I had over $5M in capital to invest, so I started a supporting organization
at my local community foundation. The advantage of a supporting organization is
I got a lot of assistance that I otherwise would not get if I started a private
foundation. There are additional benefits as well that make a supporting
organization superior to a private foundation. The only downside is you don't
have absolute control, but to me that's a benefit because my foundation won't
let me do anything stupid. Having the supporting organization means that I can
say "this is what I'd like to see solved" and then there is a whole staff that
is dedicated to getting it done.

The choices are yours to make. If you want to solve specific problems the
advice above may be helpful. But you could ignore all of it and just invest in
existing causes, e.g., you might choose just to fund science fairs all over the
country or just give it all to the American Cancer Society. It all depends on what problem(s) you choose to want to solve.

Keep in mind that there are no right answers; there are only reasonable
directions to take. It's your money. You get to decide how you want to spend it.